


these endless numbered days

by hoosierbitch



Category: Leverage
Genre: Angst, Episode Remix, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, M/M, Trust, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-14
Updated: 2011-01-14
Packaged: 2017-10-22 14:14:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/238914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hoosierbitch/pseuds/hoosierbitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As much as I loved the ridiculous fight in the warehouse, I think it probably would have gone down a bit more like this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	these endless numbered days

**Author's Note:**

> This is for the lovely [](http://usakeh.livejournal.com/profile)[**usakeh**](http://usakeh.livejournal.com/), who requested hurt!Eliot, and suggested an alternate version of the finale that was a mite more realistic. With some Eliot/Moreau thrown in for extra angst. :-) Thank you for being such a supportive and generous friend. And thank you to [](http://photoash.livejournal.com/profile)[**photoash**](http://photoash.livejournal.com/) and [](http://elrhiarhodan.livejournal.com/profile)[**elrhiarhodan**](http://elrhiarhodan.livejournal.com/) for their fabulous beta work! Any remaining mistakes are all my fault. The title is taken from an Iron & Wine album of the same name.

One. Two. Three.

A count for every inhale and a count for every exhale because if he didn’t count it out he’d forget to do it and there was too much fluid in his lungs to take any chances.

Four. Five. Six. He was beginning to think about not breathing. Seven. About drowning in his own blood. Eight. The end of another day of almost dying and he was beginning to forget, nine, he was beginning to forget, ten, why he was trying to live so goddamn _eleven_ hard.

Every inhale and every exhale. Twelve. Thirteen. They would come for him.

He had to be waiting.

Fourteen. Fifteen. _Please_. Sixteen. _Hurry_.

*

After their second job together – the one at the VA hospital – Nate had been sure that the gig was too good to last. Four thieves and an insurance agent? It barely made a mediocre knock-knock joke, let alone a business plan. So he’d kept his cards close to his chest and his skepticism even closer.

But then—somehow—it had worked. _They_ had worked. Together, smoothly, over and over again.

Three years and it felt like a new life, a new way of living. On the wrong side of the law but always on the side of _right_. And it appealed to something in him. Some childish Robin Hood fantasy, some outlaw archetype he thought he could rebuild himself into. He’d stopped thinking that every day could be their last.

Three years and everything shattered. He was not a good guy, life was not a Disney film, he did not deserve a happy ending.

Three years after their first job they went up against Damien Moreau.

And everything went to hell.

*

Eliot wondered, afterwards, what Nate had been thinking.

Not in a sarcastic way, not even in a mean way, just – he wondered how Nate had thought the fight would go. Ten of Moreau’s men armed with multiple weapons and in possession of the best vantage points. Knowing Moreau, they probably had years of experience fighting together as a team and zero compunctions about leaving them all for dead.

It would be nice to think that Nate had so much faith in him that he thought that Eliot could take them all out and still arrive in the hangar in time to back them up. But Nate had to have known the odds as well as Eliot did.

He’d picked up the gun ( _familiar, hated weight of it, a handshake with a snake_ ), calculated his opponents’ positions as best he could, and prayed.

Three minutes later and the warehouse was on fire. Nine men were dead, he was almost out of bullets, and Chapman was pointing a gun at him.

“You said you didn’t like guns.”

Eliot reached for the gun tucked into his belt but before he could say anything – buy himself some time, gain the upper hand, throw Chapman off his game – a shot rang out.

A lot earlier than three years ago ( _before the VA job, before Nate, before he’d started hoping_ ) he’d resigned himself to the fact that it would end this way. Before he’d even met Moreau, back when he was just one faceless man with a gun among thousands, strangers trying to kill him for reasons he didn’t entirely understand, he’d known he wasn’t going to die comfortably.

Flames licked at his back, his blood pooled on the cement, and he smiled.

*

The easiest thing he’d ever done in his entire life was love Damien Moreau.

Love the sound of his voice as he slipped in and out of a half-dozen different languages, the curve of his lips when he smirked, the bite of his teeth when he held Eliot down and made him beg.

He'd been hired to head Moreau's security team: be with the man at all times, watch his back, anticipate his needs, obey his commands. It wasn't long before he stopped going back to his hotel room at night and started staying in Moreau's bed, still carrying out his orders.

The hardest thing he’d ever done was leave him.

*

“Who are you?” Moreau demanded.

Nate smiled. It felt nice to have the upper hand for once. “You know how it feels like you’ve been poked by a stick? You know, over these last six months or so? Well. I’m that stick.” He felt like a cat who’d just gotten the canary – and with good reason. This was the biggest win his team had had yet.

As if he’d just been waiting for his cue, the door at the back of the hanger slammed open, and Nate let the rush of victory wash over him. Eliot had arrived to back them up, and put the final nail in Moreau’s coffin.

Only Moreau didn’t look the slightest bit perturbed, and Eliot was being oddly silent, and if – _no_.

It _had_ to be Eliot. It had been too long. If it wasn’t Eliot, then that meant that not only would they lose Moreau, it would mean – it meant – he turned, and saw Chapman. A gun in his hand and blood splattered all over his shirt.

“Please, my friend, do continue.” Eliot was missing, maybe dead, and Moreau, the _fucker_ , was taunting him. “Aren’t you going to poke me with your little stick again?”

There was so much blood on Chapman’s shirt.

He shouldn’t have left Eliot alone in the warehouse. They should have surrendered. Let Moreau go and chased him down another day in another place with a better plan – Chapman saw him staring and smirked. “Your man’s not dead,” he said. Moreau looked as relieved as Nate felt. One more piece of a new puzzle that didn’t seem to have any edges. “But he will be dead, very very soon.”

Moreau laughed. “How perfect. It seems you have a choice. You can chase me – whatever good that will do you – or you can leave, and save your friend.”

“I will hunt you down,” he whispered, and it was too quiet for Moreau to hear but it wasn’t for Moreau, wasn’t a threat to keep him running, wasn’t even a promise to keep himself on track. It was just – fact. “I will make you pay.”

They boarded the plane. And all that Nate could do was watch it take off. Taking off for some foreign country where Moreau would know all the major players, had set up the game and made all the rules –

None of that mattered now.

He had to get to Eliot.

*

He was at thirty-three when they came for him. He’d had to start over a couple of times. Blacked out, once or twice. Had a couple coughing fits that had splattered blood on the cement in front of his mouth and wasn’t _that_ a good sign. And a few times he’d just forgotten where he was. What he was doing. Why it mattered.

Thirty-three and listening to the wet rasp of his lungs, thirty-four when he heard yelling, seventy-one when the EMTs strapped him onto a stretcher and he forgot himself. Felt restraints and pain and hands on his body that he had not invited, and he’d tried to fight back. Seventy-three and he was out, pain ripping through his body like a fire. Burning his nerve endings and using his muscles as fuel, growing, killing him. They strapped an oxygen mask around his face and he stopped counting.

*

He dreamed about Moreau on the way to the hospital. It happened, sometimes, when he was exhausted or unconscious or high on painkillers that broke down his defenses. He wished they were all nightmares, but they weren't.

Moreau had loved his accent. Would get him drunk just to hear him drawl. Would bully him into singing, sometimes, when the whisky was good and the stars were just right and Eliot was tired enough to give in. He’d sing and Moreau would sit behind him, wrap himself around Eliot the way Eliot was wrapped around his guitar, playing with his body like he owned it. Good nights. Long nights. Months of nights. Guitar responsive in his hands, Moreau laughing and flattering and strong, nights so sweet it almost made up for what Moreau had him do during the day.

Eliot was a slow learner. Liked his facts like he liked his beer, cold and right in front of him. Liked things simple, straightforward, he liked to have evidence.

The thing about Moreau, the thing that Eliot tried forget when he woke up cold and lonely, the thing that had taken him too long to learn - was that Moreau wasn’t just smart. Wasn’t just cruel, wasn’t just powerful. He was also, at the end of long days, when Eliot was bruised and tired and Moreau’s hands were big and gentle – he could be loving.

Eliot was a slow learner, but he wasn’t stupid. Over those long months the evidence had added up, and when the day finally came that he couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger he’d left. First time he’d left someone who loved him instead of the other way around. It wasn’t any easier.

*

Everyone knew that Eliot hated hospitals. The team had known for years, and about a minute after Eliot woke up, all of the nurses and doctors in the hospital knew it, too. No one could figure out quite _how_ Eliot managed to get out of his room, down the hallway, and to the elevators with a bleeding bullet wound in his side and extremely powerful painkillers in his system, but he did.

There was nothing Nate could do except watch. Eliot had already punched him in the face for trying – not hard enough to break his nose or fracture anything, which was a sign of how off his game Eliot was.

When Hardison picked him off the floor and helped to the hallway, he saw that Parker was already there. “No, Parker, _don’t_ – ” She was standing between Eliot and the elevator. Eliot had blood dripping down his torso. It was collecting on the floor beneath him. All the cuts on his knuckles had reopened. He looked like a monster out of a horror movie, a warrior gone mad with fury.

He couldn’t hear what Parker was saying, but somehow, somehow, she calmed Eliot down. Nate warned off the orderlies who were preparing a sedative – trying to launch a sneak-attack on Eliot was _never_ a good idea – and saw Sophie down the other end of the hallway, running similar interference on hospital security.

Another minute and Eliot passed out. Parker caught him, sitting down easily with Eliot in her arms, cradling his body. “He didn’t mean to,” she said when Nate and the nurses approached. “You can’t blame him.”

“I know,” Nate said, one hand covering the growing bruise on his cheek. “I know.”

*

The surgery went smoothly enough, considering the amount of damage the bullet had done and the amount of damage Eliot had done to himself trying to fight off the medical staff. The Italian woman – Maria, she’d eventually revealed, although Nate had heard her staff call her by at least three other names – had taken care of everything. Gotten the police off their backs and kept their names and faces and fingerprints out of the system. Hardison had double-checked her work and proclaimed it _almost_ as good as his. And, somehow, she managed to cover up the warehouse explosion as if it had never happened. Thirteen people had been in that warehouse. Four had made it out.

“I didn’t mean to kill them,” Eliot whispered. His throat was raw, his voice painfully rough. That wasn’t why Nate wished he would stop talking.

It was late. Three, maybe four in the morning. Eliot’s pillow was blocking the clock. Earlier in the day Sophie had opened the blinds on the window to let in the sun and no one had bothered to close them afterwards.

The city was beautiful at night. All lit up. Taillights on the move, people working late nights in their offices, cleaning crews making their rounds.

“Don’t tell the others. Don’t tell them what I did. They don’t need to know.”

Eliot fell asleep soon after that. Nate looked at his hands, folded in his lap, and then looked at Eliot’s. IVs inserted into his veins, bruises and cuts on his knuckles, restraints around his wrists. Nate’s hands were clean but the blame for what happened in the warehouse – the person responsible for the deaths of those men – was not Eliot.

He’d keep the secret. For both of them.

*

He hated the smells. Hated the food, the bed, the fucking _tissue_ of a gown, hated the way doctors tramped into his room at all hours of the night and then couldn’t figure out why he wasn’t sleeping. Hated that they put restraints on his wrists after he fell asleep and hated that he needed them to be there.

The team was always there when he woke up. Sophie even growled at the doctors for him so he didn’t have to. Hardison hooked up the TV so he could watch new release movies and good fights without paying, Parker stole him dinners from five-star restaurants, and Nate – Nate just sat in the chair by his bed like he was chained there too.

He didn’t sleep well and he didn’t sleep often but every time he woke up Nate was there to unlock the restraints on his wrists. It was probably Nate who put them on.

It was dangerous. To let the team get so attached to him. He may be slow, but he wasn’t stupid, there were lessons he _had_ to have learned by now, but – but somehow he couldn’t bring himself to warn them off. He’d lose too much of himself if he tore himself away now. And besides, he was getting tired of leaving.

*

“We found him,” Nate said a couple of days after the surgery. “He’s in San Lorenzo.”

Eliot nodded. Rubbed at his wrists. Prodded experimentally at the wound in his side until Nate grumbled at him to stop.

“We have to let him go for now,” Nate said quietly. With his head bowed, voice soft, Eliot could imagine him as a priest. Father confessor, holding all of their sins, holding his own even closer.

“We should let him go for good,” Eliot whispered. He wasn’t one to give up on a fight but he also – somewhere in the endless breaths of time that he’d been bleeding out, when he’d coughed up some blood and felt the heaviness in his lungs, he’d – he’d felt at peace. He liked that feeling. Missed it. Didn’t want to die before he found it again. Maybe he wasn’t meant to find it unless he was close to death ( _and wouldn’t that just be his luck?_ ), but he had places he could look. His garden, his kitchen, in the office that Hardison had put together for him, on the couch with the team around him.

“Will you tell me what went on between you and Moreau?”

It felt like someone was digging their fingers into the wound on his side. Deep into the bruises.

Nate deserved to know.

“We were close,” he said, finally. “For a while.”

“I’d guessed that.”

“Not – I didn’t just work for him, Nate.” Although that would have been bad enough. The things he’d done for his paycheck weren’t things he was proud of. “We were – we were more than that.”

“I figured that,” Nate said quietly. “The EMTs that rescued you from the warehouse? I didn’t call them.” Eliot thought about the fire, the way the gun had felt in his hands, the amount of times he’d almost stopped counting. “Moreau did. They never would have gotten there in time, otherwise.”

Eliot did not want to be grateful to Moreau. Didn’t want to owe him, didn’t want to be in his debt, didn’t want to have any connection with him whatsoever. He hated Nate, a little, for forcing them back together.

Then he looked at Nate. Nate, the only man he'd ever met who hated hospitals as much as he did, Nate who had refused to leave his side, Nate who held and hid both of their sins with such terrifying ease - and realized he didn't even have to forgive him.

They were all just...trying. Wasn't anything else that they could do.

*

When Eliot started to fall asleep - painkillers kicking in, easing some of the tension from his body - Nate slid his fingers between Eliot’s. He gazed nonchalantly at the TV and did his best to act as thought he hadn’t done anything at all. Hoped that if he ignored it, Eliot would, too. When Eliot didn’t take his hand away from Nate’s and punch him in the face with it, he let himself relax.

It felt like the first time he’d been able to in months. Eliot would be okay. And if he wasn't, well - Nate was good at putting puzzles back together. Even when there were pieces missing.

He put the TV on the Food Network, smiled at Eliot’s murmured approval, and thought about the things that counted and the things he counted on. Four thieves and an insurance agent.

He couldn’t wait to hear the punchline.

*

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